The CHR’s Professor Jane Taylor will be participating in this weeks Global Narratives of Artificial Intelligence: Sub-Saharan Africa - African Histories and Philosophies of Artificial Intelligence conference hosted by the HSRC and the University of Cambridge.

African Histories and Philosophies of Artificial Intelligence (with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge)

Overview:

Artificial intelligence is set to have an unprecedented global impact – and public perceptions will shape much of it, affecting how the technology is developed, adopted and regulated. But different cultures see AI through very different lenses: diverse scientific, economic, artistic, religious, linguistic, philosophical, literary, and cinematic traditions have led to diverging conceptions of what intelligent machines can and should be.
Many of these worldviews are currently not given the attention they deserve, both within cultures and between them. The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) at the University of Cambridge therefore launched the Global AI Narratives Project to understand and analyse how different cultures and regions perceive the risks and benefits of AI, and the influences that are shaping those perceptions.

In collaboration with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa, CFI will hold a series of three online workshop to explore portrayals and perceptions of AI and robotics in Sub-Saharan Africa and its African contexts. This is the first of these workshops, and will engage in the histories and philosophies of AI in Africa.